When I woke up the other day and perused the latest Oscar nominations and saw that Gary Oldman had finally been nominated for an Academy Award for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I felt something akin to how Red Sox fans must have felt when Boston won the 2004 World Series. Finally after decades of fantastic performances this guy finally gets over.
I honestly believe that in addition to Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman may be the best living actor today. He's a person that consistently transforms himself in a such a manner that he becomes a character. Oldman is never "Oldman playing a character" like Brad Pitt is "Pitt playing a character" or "George Clooney playing a character."* Oldman quite literally is the character. Just check out some of the roles he's had over the years:
Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy
Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK
Count Dracula in Dracula
Norman Stansfield in The Professional
Beethoven in Immortal Beloved
Zorg in The Fifth Element
Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series
Jim Gordon in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises
That's an impressive list to say the least and I'm not even counting some of his impressive cameo roles like Drexl Spivey in True Romance.
Yet after all this time the 53 year old actor has been unable to garner an Academy Award nomination until now. That's just a damn tragedy. If you really want to get a good baseline on how amazing an actor this guy is, I suggest you watch Sid and Nancy, Immortal Beloved, and The Fifth Element. You will be astounded at the range this guy has because each role is monumentally different.
My sincere hope is that he wins the award for Best Actor. My guess is that it will not happen because George Clooney and Brad Pitt are both nominated in the same category, and to be honest Hollywood is a a bunch of starf***ers. Yet Oldman, even if he loses will do so with grace and dignity. And that makes him an actor not a moviestar. I respect a man who wears the former like a badge of honor than anyone who flaunts the latter like Lil' John's gold teeth. Congratulations Gary! May the future be filled with many more stunning performances.
*I want to be clear that there is a distinct difference between actors and moviestars. Moviestars are a "name" to draw people to the theater. People like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ryan Reynolds, Katherine Heigel, Kate Hudson--they all fall into this category. I don't for a second consider them to be "actors" because for the most part they are playing themselves. Moneyball was a good film but it wasn't a stretch for Pitt. And even George Clooney's win for Syriana was a joke. All I saw was a fat George Clooney. Whoop de do. This is not to say that I don't enjoy the movies these guys make. I loved O Brother Where Out Thou? The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Oceans 11, Fight Club, Seven, and 12 Monkeys. That being said no one will ever convince me that Ryan Reynolds is an actor. Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day Lewis, Michelle Williams, Colin Firth--those are real actors and actresses. Very rarely do people fall into both categories. In point of fact I can really only think of two right now and that's Johnny Depp and Leonardo Dicaprio. However I respect those guys a hell of a lot because both had opportunies to go the moviestar route and they didn't. They decided to make quality films that challenged their range. Now agree or disagree on who's really an actor or who's really a moviestar is up for debate. But you can't deny that in Hollywood there are actors and there are moviestars. It was that way back in the day with Frank Sinatra and Marylinn Monroe, it's true today with the people I've mentioned, and it will be true twenty years from now.
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